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Favoritism in Contests: Head Starts and Handicaps

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  • Rene Kirkegaard

    (Department of Economics, Brock University)

Abstract

We examine a contest, modelled as an all-pay auction, in which a strong and a weak contestant compete, and where a contestant may suffer from a handicap or benefit from a head start. The former reduces the contestant's score by a fixed percentage; the latter is an additive bonus. The two instruments affect the contest in significantly different ways. In particular, a handicap does not "cancel out" a head start. The effort maximizing combination of head starts and handicaps is then analyzed. In the benchmark model, it is generally profitable to give the weak contestant a head start. However, we identify a trade-off which implies that it may or may not be profitable to handicap the strong contestant. Indeed, the weak contestant may have a head start and a handicap. The trade-off is absent in a perturbed model, but there it is unambiguously the weak contestant who should be handicapped.

Suggested Citation

  • Rene Kirkegaard, 2008. "Favoritism in Contests: Head Starts and Handicaps," Working Papers 0805, Brock University, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2008.
    • Handle: RePEc:brk:wpaper:0805
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Reut Megidish & Aner Sela, 2014. "Caps In Sequential Contests," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(2), pages 608-617, April.
    2. Berman, Ron & Katona, Zsolt, 2010. "The Role of Search Engine Optimization in Search Rankings," MPRA Paper 20129, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Ella Segev & Aner Sela, 2011. "Sequential All-Pay Auctions with Head Starts and Noisy Outputs," Working Papers 1106, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    4. Dubey, Pradeep, 2013. "The role of information in contests," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 160-163.
    5. Ella Segev & Aner Sela, 2014. "Sequential all-pay auctions with head starts," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(4), pages 893-923, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    All-Pay Auctions; Contests; Favoritism; Handicap; Head Start;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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